HeMateMe: If you are older, you appreciate the old movies, because they were cutting edge, when you were young and maleable. Seeing these movies again allows one to relive their youth, and, because they were the best films of the day, when you were young, they never seems stale or poorly made. In other words, you are a little too close to the scene to see the problem.

People I've spoken to in their 20s and 30s tell me that these films are unwatchable. That doesn't mean that they think movies like "The Hangover" or "Whatver Happens in Vegas" are great movies. Far from it. There is more crap out there than ever before. But, the best movies being made today clobber the stuff from the 1940s or 1950s.

So many things have changed. For example, look at the film "Titanic", with Kate Winslet and Leo Dicaprio. The titanic story has been done before, a number of films have been done on this topic. Which would you rather see, James Cameron's hi tech film, with screen writers and actors free to do what they please, or some 1955 film about the Titanic wreck, in crappy film quality, few moving props, and a screenplay carefully being monitored by censors? If you want, you can go back even further, and find a black and white film about the titanic. The "ship" will be a big board moving back and forth, like a teeter totter, shot on a sound stage, while the actors spout wooden dialogue, being shot at one, simple, front angle. Boring.

Jim Bartle: There were so many great movies in the 30s and 40s, with Spencer Tracy, Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn, Fred Astaire, Rosalind Russell, Ingrid Bergman, Clark Gable, Greta Garbo, James Stewart, John Wayne. On and on.

Just take a look at the list of movies directed by George Cukor, so many greats.

galdur: <HeMateMe> I agree, much of this old stuff is terrible and ages very badly but I seem to remember some good film-noir from the forties and fifties.

There was a big leap in the seventies with Pakula´s conspiracy trilogy, Godfather, The Taxi Driver, Chinatown, One Flew Over the Cuckoo´s Nest, The Conversation, The French Connection and more. I think it´s still the best decade of American cinema.

HeMateMe: <aldur> I agree about the 70s. Pound for pound, it is the best decade for film. There were not so many films being made then (unlike today), but some very memorable stuff appeared. Coming Home, proabably the first well done anti-war film, Chinatown (dealt with incest), the rough inner city sex of "Midnight Cowboy"--a lot of films simply didn't get made before 1970. The plight of a single women having premarital sex (Diane Keaton--Mr. Goodbar) is explored. The images of a rudely divorced woman--Jill Clayburgh in "Unmarried Woman" having sex while unmarried, then refusing to marry again, even though the new guy is quite decent, are explored. The filmakers were allowed to show sex, not for shock value, but because it was needed to define the characters on screen.

This doesn't mean there weren't terrifc actors around before 1970, but post-70 the directors seem to be much less burdened with studio and government censorship. The equipment gets better, budgets get larger.

<Alpha Male> You are older. If you talk to a group of people age 20-30, you might find one person who has seen a Trufault film, something like that. People of a certain youth won't watch the old movies. They see life differently than how the world was interpreted back then.

Wayne Proudlove: HeMateMe knows the youth. No, don't pay attention, it's silliness.
Of course there's film students and bohemians and film buffs watching the old movies. There's a renaissance in fact with the nostalgia of The Artist and Hugo.

Wayne Proudlove: But I say forget John Ford and Truffaut and them and film students today should consider the '80s the classics and check out the masters from that time: Adrian Lyne's "Fatal Attraction", Die Hard, the Troma films like Toxic Avenger, stuff by David Lynch and Wim Wenders and Abel Ferrara and Scorsese, independent stuff like Liquid Sky and The Brother From Another Planet.

drnooo: actually HeMateMe has a lot of good points about how people watch films
the more cuts the better etc: very likely thats the seperation point: the more cuts for many it keeps their interest, the less cuts its more like a stage play the films from mtv on ripened that way of looking at movies, before then the camera barely moved

drnooo: though in the end whenever someone says the best movies ever is this or that, it usually says more about them than the movies its like saying Capa is as outmoded as John Ford, they both did things a lot simpler than the complexity of others

HeMateMe: <Wayne Proudlove> I think you mention two things that make my point--"nostalgia" and "film buffs". Both are usually minority groups. I didn't say "NO ONE among the youth watches these films", but come on--people 25 years old will never find out what fine actors David Niven and Katharine Hepburn were, because they have no interest in movies that old.

We probably won't be seeing <The Artist> playing at the Magic Johnson Theaters in Harlem.

HeMateMe: My high school drama club had better built scenery props than "The Searchers". I half expected a horse and rider to come crashing through a paper mache cloud.It was interesting when I saw it as a teenager, unwatchable now. Same thing with Rio Bravo, cliche dialogue, unrealistic scenes (Ricky Nelson breaks into song, just happens to have a guitar handy), the woman are portrayed as morons.

BTW, if you want to see a cute look at the "old Hollywood", rent "The World's Greatest Lover", a comedy with Gene Wilder trying to become the next Valentino of film. Very funny, and a good luck at old movie stuff. Also, Woody Allen's "Zeitgest" is a good look back at that stuff. Also "Radio Days."

Instead of a corny film like The Searchers, where the indians were played by italian guys from the Bronx, how about a film like Clint Eastwood's <The Unforgiven> which shows how brutal the old West really could be?

OhioChessFan: <WP: There was a big leap in the seventies with Pakula´s conspiracy trilogy, Godfather, The Taxi Driver, Chinatown, One Flew Over the Cuckoo´s Nest, The Conversation, The French Connection and more. I think it´s still the best decade of American cinema.>

The 40's. The Best Years of Our Lives alone would make it a great decade. Casablanca, Laura, Grapes of Wrath, Citizen Kane...

DrNyet: One has to wonder if more than a small minority of people have any
hesitation to support the government ramrodding whatever might
benefit them, no matter how silly.

From Chessbase.com:

"Strasbourg: Getting chess into schools Europe-wide
27.02.2012 – For six months now the Kasparov Chess Foundation has been lobbying to get chess introduced into the curriculum of schools in Europe. With the help of the British charity Chess in Schools Garry Kasparov worked the members of the European Parliament, so far garnering 377 of the 380 signatures required. You can help: call your MEPs and tell them to sign the declaration."

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